Information and Communication in Venice Rethinking Early Modern Politics

A unique investigation of the political uses of different forms of communication - oral, manuscript, and printed - in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice. Today we take it for granted that communication and politics influence each other through spin-doctoring and media power. What, however, was the use of communication in an age when rulers recognized no political role for their subjects? And what access to political information did those excluded from government have? In answering these questions, Filippo de Vivo uses an extremely rich and diverse range of sources - from council debates to leaks and spies' reports, from printed pamphlets to graffiti and rumours. In the process, he demonstrates just how closely political communication was intertwined with the wider social and economic life of the city. Challenging the social and cultural boundaries of more traditional accounts, he shows how politics in early modern Venice extended far beyond the patrician elite to involve the entire population, from humble clerks and foreign spies, to notaries, artisans, barbers, and prostitutes.

Introduction. 1. Communication in the government. 2. Communication in the political arena. 3. Communication in the city. 4. Communicative transactions. 5. The system challenged: The Interdict of 1606-7. 6. Propaganda? Print in context. Epilogue. Bibliographical references. Index.

Filippo de Vivo is the author of numerous scholarly articles on the history and historiography of the Republic of Venice. He was educated at the University of Cambridge and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He was a Research Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and since 2003 has been a Lecturer in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, London.

...a major contribution to the history of early modern Venice and also to the history of information and propaganda. Besides being original in its ideas and firmly based on the sources, the book is remarkable for something much rarer in historical monographs: its penetrating political insights. Indeed, the claim made in the book s subtitle is truly justified.